Jimmy Carter - Military policy

Carter had inherited a wide variety of tough problems in international
affairs, and in dealing with them, he was hampered by confusion and
uncertainty in Congress and the nation concerning the role the nation
should play in the world. A similar state of mind prevailed in the closely
related area of military policy, and that state of mind affected the
administration. At the beginning of his presidency, Carter pardoned
Vietnam War draft evaders and announced that American troops would be
withdrawn from South Korea. He also decided against construction of the
B-1 bomber as a replacement for the aging B-52, regarding the proposed
airplane as costly and obsolete, and also decided to cut back on the
navy's shipbuilding program. Champions of military power protested,
charging that he was not sufficiently sensitive to the threat of the
Soviet Union.

In recent years, the Soviets had strengthened their forces and influence,
expanding the army, developing a large navy, and increasing their arms and
technicians in the Third World. As Carter's concern about these
developments mounted, he alarmed critics of military spending by calling
for a significant increase in the military budget for fiscal 1979, a
substantial strengthening of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
forces, and the development and deployment of a new weapon, the neutron
bomb. Next, he dismayed advocates of greater military strength by first
deciding that the bomb would not be built and then announcing that
production would be postponed while the nation waited to see how the
Soviets behaved.

In both diplomatic and military matters, the president often found it
difficult to stick with his original intentions. He made concessions to
demands for more military spending and more activity in Africa and became
less critical of American arms sales. He both responded to criticism of
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and sought to restore its
effectiveness, regarding it as an essential instrument that had been
misused.

Critics, including Henry Kissinger, Henry Jackson, and many Republican
senators, found him weak and ineffective, confusing and confused. They
suggested that his administration had "seen that its neat theories
about the world do not fit the difficult realities" and that
"it must now come to grips with the world as it is." One
close observer, Meg Greenfield of
Newsweek
magazine, wrote in 1978 that while "many of our politicians, more
traumatized than instructed by that miserable war [Vietnam], tend to see
Vietnams everywhere," more and more congressmen "seem . . .
to be getting bored with their own post-Vietnam bemusement," and
"under great provocation from abroad, Carter himself is beginning
to move."